Department Spotlight

While many scientists fight disease-causing bacteria, a Whitworth
faculty-student research team is studying ways to use bacteria to
reduce toxic waste. Assistant Professor of Biology Frank Caccavo
and senior biology major Kathleen Fisher are using a $33,330 M.J.
Murdock Charitable Trust grant to develop technologies that use
bacteria to clean up toxic waste through a process called bioremediation.

The two-year undergraduate research project, "Ecology of Bioaugmentation
with Metal-reducing Bacteria," focuses on microorganisms that
"breathe" toxic metals much the way humans breathe oxygen.
The metals that these organisms transform include radioactive substances
such as uranium and cobalt, metals that Caccavo says were used at
Washington state's Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

"These radioactive metals were dumped into the groundwater
as waste during the manufacture of nuclear weapons," Caccavo
says. "The metal wastes are now migrating through groundwater
toward the Columbia River, which poses a threat to the ecosystem
of the Pacific Northwest."

Some microbes convert these metal wastes into a precipitate that
does not migrate in groundwater, Caccavo says. He and Fisher hope
that the microbes can be injected in the ground to create a biological
barrier that would protect the Columbia River, but one obstacle
stands in their way.

"We don't know what will happen when we inject the organisms
into the ground," Caccavo says. "We are conducting research
designed to answer that very question."